Of course, Grissom had to question Lindsey on what had happened when she was with the Doctor, but her testimony didn't really help much. The entire thing seemed so implausible, especially coming from a thirteen year old girl, that Catherine kept interrupting and insisting that Lindsey tell the truth. Grissom eventually had to ask Catherine to leave the room.
"The Doctor was kind of in my head," said Lindsey, now that her mother was gone. "When I was with that Bradshaw guy, I mean. Like a telepathic conference. He told me he wasn't just some creepy old man who abducted thirteen year old girls. He told me he had a plan. He'd distract Bradshaw by talking at him, and when he said the word 'bite', I had to bite the guy's arm as hard as I could and then leap towards the Tardis. That's… the box you guys saw. It's called the Tardis. So anyways, I did that and I leapt towards it, and then the doors flew open and I totally wasn't expecting that at all. I thought I'd have to pry them apart or something, you know. But I climbed in and locked the doors—he said to make sure I did that so that Bradshaw couldn't get in. And so I get inside and I'm like, 'oh my god, this is way too cool.' Because it's, like, huge! I mean, really just massive. And I know he told me beforehand that it was bigger on the inside, but I guess I didn't realize just how big it really was. Anyways, so I was in the Tardis, and found the door in the back of the console room, and I followed his directions and opened up the back entrance. The Doctor comes flying in, I shut the door behind him, and he scrambles to his feet and opens a random door, and then we're back in the console room, which just makes no sense at all. He told me that's because the Tardis is alive and she likes to rearrange all the rooms, but I think he just led me in a circle the first time. He stumbles over to the console, pushes some buttons and pulls some levers, and then there's this ugly noise like an elephant sneezing, and the whole room shakes and the Doctor tells me that we're in flight.
"Flying? Yeah, right, I told him. I mean, it wasn't like this was Marry Poppins with flying umbrellas and tea parties on the ceiling. But he just gave me a smile and a wink, poked some buttons, went over to the doors and threw them open, and, oh, my god, we were in outer space. I know, it sounds totally nutsy, but we were just hanging there, above the Earth, in the middle of outer space. And that's when I knew this guy was totally for real."
"Did he explain to you why he was flying around outer space in a British police box that's bigger on the inside?" asked Grissom.
"Oh, yeah, well, apparently, they're all like that where he comes from," said Lindsey. "Not the police box part—the bigger on the inside part. I mean, he is an alien, you know. At first I was like, an alien, yeah right. I mean, you know, he looks human and stuff. Course, he told me I got it backwards—humans look like Time Lords, not the other way around. And I'm all like, pompous much? Cause I mean, Time Lord. What a stupid name for a species. And he laughed and said, yeah, his people are a pretty stuffy lot, and they don't like him very much because he goes off and has fun while they all sit around having meetings and filling out paperwork."
Grissom didn't mention to Lindsey that he was pretty sure there were no such people. That, even if there had been at some point, the Doctor had killed them all. Clearly, the Doctor hadn't told her this, either.
"So I'm like, 'okay. Cool. You've got a spaceship. So, take me somewhere spacey,'" Lindsey continued. "But he was all like, 'I can't… blah blah blah… mom's still in danger… blah blah blah… duty to the universe… blah blah blah…' and so I'm all like, 'okay, so if mom's in danger and this Mara person is going to kill everyone on the planet, then why did we leave anyways?' But apparently, Doctor I'm-So-Mysterious didn't want to answer me, he just closed the doors and pressed some more buttons on the console.
"So we landed in Australia in the middle of the night. Oh, yeah, the Tardis is a time machine—did I mention that? Yeah, so we got there and the Doctor had a bunch of junk in his hands that he'd fished out while we were still in flight, and he told me to be really quiet because Tegan was sleeping. And I'm all, 'who's Tegan?' and he's like, 'shhh!' And then we open the doors and went off to find Tegan.
"Yeah, she was asleep in her bedroom just like the Doctor had said. The Doctor was really careful to be quiet; he gave me the headgear thing and told me to hold it while he gave Tegan a sedative. Then he took the headgear, and put it on—it was, like, a bicycle helmet with wires and stuff coming out—and then he stuffed this little crystal into the middle, and turned it all on. I thought maybe he was going to hurt her because he looked really sad and upset, but it didn't look like she was in any pain or anything. Then the headgear made this little ding sound, and he took it off, and pulled out the crystal and handed it to me. He said he caught the Mara in that crystal and it was really, really important I hang onto it and didn't lose it and he'd meet me back at the Tardis. I think he was upset about Tegan, so I just left him there and went back to the Tardis. And I know you're going to tell me I'm making this all up, but there really was something in that crystal. It was, like, black and snaky and swimming around in there. It's not like I had to wait long or anything before the Doctor came back. He snatched the crystal out of my hands without even asking me or anything, shoved it into his pocket and told me he'd fixed everything now and he was taking me back home."
"If he trapped this… Mara when it was nighttime in Australia," said Grissom, "how come all those people collapsed while it was still nighttime here?"
"Yeah, I asked him that," said Lindsey. "I learned that lesson the hard way. Never, ever, ever ask the Doctor how anything works, because he'll just start babbling jibberish at you at about a thousand miles an hour. I think he makes it all up. Like he's just trying to impress people or something."
"So he took you to Australia, and then took you back?" said Grissom. "He didn't try to hurt you or convince you to stay with him? Just there and back, without a second thought?"
Lindsey looked at the spot where her mother had been, before Grissom had shepherded Catherine from the room. Lindsey leaned in towards Grissom. "Don't tell mom," she whispered, "but I kind of guilt tripped him into taking me somewhere else first."
Grissom raised an eyebrow at her.
Lindsey giggled. "Yeah, for being this big scary alien that all sorts of nasty people keep trying to get rid of, he's really easy to guilt trip. I just told him that I saved his life, and this was a time machine so it wasn't like he couldn't drop me back off where I was before, and then I added a few pleases in and told him I'd do anything he wanted, and then he got really embarrassed and flustered and he said fine, as long as I stopped doing that because I was thirteen and he was nine hundred and something, and that was just wrong in a whole lot of ways. And apparently," Lindsey added, glancing over at the door where Catherine was waiting for her, "he said Mom already slapped him and he wasn't keen on getting any more slapping."
"So he took you somewhere else?" asked Grissom.
"Oh yeah," said Lindsey, apparently forgetting to whisper. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. "We went to this theme park in the year 3500, and he told me not to wander off and he got pretty mad when I did, and then he told me I was lucky that Mom put a GPS in my phone because otherwise he'd never have found me. And I was like, 'she did what?' but it's not like I could throw it away or anything because, I mean, where am I going to get myself another cell phone when I'm about a thousand years in the future and on another planet? I didn't even know the GPS tracking thing still worked in the future anyways. It doesn't, actually, but he built this tracker thing, and he explained that, too, and I was like, okay, okay, I'll stop asking questions.
"So after we had fun there for a little bit, he was like, 'okay, Lindsey. You're going home.'"
"And he took you home then?" asked Grissom.
"Um, I think he tried," said Lindsey. She laughed. "He's a really bad driver. And he doesn't ask for directions. But yeah, I think it was about… um… a week before I got back home." She sighed, and looked over at the door. "I really thought he'd take me with him. I mean, it's fun, you know? But I think he got a bit freaked out when that giant lobster almost cut off my arm, because that's when he got the Tardis to actually take me back. I mean, he didn't even say goodbye. He just kind of… dumped me back on Earth and ran off." She rocked back in her chair. "And I know he told me not to flirt or anything… but he really was pretty cute. You know, for a 900 year old alien."
"He didn't take advantage of you or anything?" Grissom checked.
"Nah," said Lindsey, but she sounded almost disappointed. She gave another sigh. "Maybe when I'm older…" she mused. Then she looked back at Grissom. "Don't tell Mom I said that."
Grissom just shrugged. He wasn't really sure what to tell Catherine, but he was pretty sure that Lindsey had been returned to them unharmed and perhaps a little in love. He'd leave it to Catherine to explain why it would be a bad idea to sleep with an alien who was several centuries older than you. He figured that did not fall into his responsibilities as a crime scene investigator.